


a mother's unequivocal love

by unicyclehippo



Series: Critical Shorts [3]
Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-11
Updated: 2020-01-11
Packaged: 2021-02-27 12:27:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 588
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22207099
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/unicyclehippo/pseuds/unicyclehippo
Summary: prompt: hiraeth - a homesickness for a home to which you cannot return, a home which maybe never was; the nostalgia, the yearning, the grief for the lost places of your pastor: beau's childhood makes me cry, sorry
Relationships: Jester Lavorre/Beauregard Lionett
Series: Critical Shorts [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1824253
Comments: 2
Kudos: 91





	a mother's unequivocal love

Once, when Beau was little—not young, but little, perhaps twelve or thirteen years old and still not started her real growth—she got one of those bad fevers, the kind that the old fortune tellers and gossiping grandmothers (often one and the same) said came on the sour winds from the west. Beau didn’t know shit about “sour winds” but she knew then—and still thinks now—that the fortune tellers didn’t know jack shit about illnesses. Mostly the fever passed and left nothing with Beau, only several blank days where all she can remember is clinging heat, inescapable, unrelenting, and white all around her as the fever burned out her vision. It hadn’t been too bad; she’d been miserable while she was in it, probably, but she doesn’t remember that. Only that the days of recovery had been _agony_ —weak as a kitten, she had been tucked into her bed so tightly it was like she had been strapped down, and they poured cold soup and gruel into her. The memory of those days were inconsistent too; not the blank nothing of the fever pitch but a gauzy thing, thin and full of holes—she remembers shouting herself hoarse to be let out of bed, remembers the meals and vowing never to eat soup again, and the way her fever spotted her skin with a rash, the red barely visible on dark skin but she could feel the faint bumps when she ran her fingers across it. Those were the moment Beau knows happened—sickness, anger, and the hovering presence of the maid. But sometimes, when she casts her mind back, there is the haziest memory—a dream? or something real?—of her mother at her bedside. The coolness of blue eyes staring down at her, the coolness of a hand on her forehead. The quiet burbling of words Beau can never recall—dream or memory?—as she kept a vigil through that long, sleep-scattered night.

‘She _maybe_ kept you company while you had a fever?’ Jester clarifies, eyes wide with something Beau can’t name.

No, that’s a lie. It’s horror. She’s horrified by what Beau has told her.

‘I mean. Like, whatever right? I was fine. I’m fine.’

‘You’re better than fine,’ Jester agrees, instantly, angrily, sincerely, ‘but that _can’t_ be your best memory of her.’

‘It’s. Y’know.’ Beau scratches at an old scar of pebbled skin. The only lasting remnant of that old fever, other than the memories. ‘She’s not exactly warm. And it’s not the nicest thing she ever did for me but when I think about that night it’s kinda like—she still…I don’t fuckin’ know. She cared. She didn’t have to sit there all night but I think she did. It’s - nice. My dad was out talking to the fortune tellers like _oh my firstborn is sick what do I do_ ,’ Beau half-wails in the silly voice Jester adopts when she’s talking about Thoreau. ‘And that did absolutely nothing. Obviously. But she was there and it - it’s nice. She wasn’t that kinda person, so.’

‘Right, right, right,’ Jester says, and nods, and smiles.

And Beau ignores the still-present horror in big dark eyes and works at tucking that memory back somewhere it won’t fade, won’t change. It’s not a lot, she knows that, but when she thinks about it she can set it overtop all the other memories and the haze of it softens the rest. Lets her see it all, her whole life with them, through a gentler scope.

**Author's Note:**

> hi im unicyclehippo on tumblr as well, feel free to swing on by & say hi or send me a prompt x


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